


Life Was A Willow & It Bent Right to Your Wind

by Breakingthetide



Series: Our Love Would Be Tragic [12]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grant Ward Feels, Grant Ward Redemption, I Will Go Down With This Ship, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:26:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28624053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Breakingthetide/pseuds/Breakingthetide
Summary: Happy Birthday Grant Ward!Skye and Ward celebrate his birthday, they are married and retired in a house in the middle of nowhere in Montana, living in perfect domestic bliss.
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward
Series: Our Love Would Be Tragic [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/502141
Comments: 24
Kudos: 25





	Life Was A Willow & It Bent Right to Your Wind

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of Ward's birthday today I had to write something for him.
> 
> Yes this is technically in the Skyeward Avengers AU, but instead of adding it to the 'missing moments' fic, I wanted it to be a stand alone chapter just because.
> 
> Thank you for reading and commenting!

Grant Ward wakes to pressure on his chest, a body resting against his own, legs hitched on either side of his hips. Panic does not stream into his blood, adrenaline doesn’t sweep its way into his bones because he is fully aware of who is straddling him. Knows the scent of her skin, the curves and shape of her better than he knows anything else, would recognize her even if he lost his sight or dragging his half dead body into the gates of hell, he’d know her, anywhere, everywhere, in every universe and alternate world.

Knowing there’s not an emergency because this is not how Skye would wake him if there was one, he blindly traces her thighs, cups the back of her knees before resting both hands on her backside, feels her lean down to kiss below his ear, her hair falling into his eyes. Before he can ask if everything is okay, her reason for waking him comes to light as she whispers, ‘’happy birthday’’, and kisses him softly, sweetly, hands running down his chest before one lingers on his hip and the other over his heart.

January 7th has never been a day to be celebrated, not by Ward himself nor his family, or the father figure he once loved more than he should have. For Grant’s entire life before he met Skye and the Avengers, no one gave a shit about the day he was born besides his best friend Kebo, everyone thought it was a curse, Grant spent years being treated as a burden, thinking he shouldn’t have ever been born. And while Kebo began replacing those awful memories with better ones over the years, the trauma and abuse he endured wasn’t easy to overcome.

Since he met Skye years ago things started to change, she and his therapist Paul made him see the world differently, view himself differently, and suddenly one day the sky stopped being so dark. He saw colors for the first time, appreciated the bright blue glow of the sea, the warmth of the yellow sun on his face, soft green grass brushing his skin, the way Skye’s hand held his without malicious intent, ulterior motive or the promise of violence, she just wanted to touch him.

Everything changed, things that once held meaning no longer felt like steel against his spine, and things that once meant nothing at all became a part of his life, like holidays and birthdays. Every year Skye makes him feel loved, cherished and treasured, healing the wounds Kebo started patching up nearly twenty years ago. Band-Aids and gauze covered up the barbed wire strung along his heart and soul, slowly healing the scars in time until they were nothing more than a memory.

Ward used to hate every time his birthday came around, just like he used to hate himself, but that’s not the case anymore. He no longer wants to sulk in a corner somewhere on this day, or throw himself into a dangerous situation to forget about his mother and brother, now a day that once brought him pain now greets him with only happiness. Like a sun rise after a never ending night, that is what his life feels like now, awake and alive when he was once drifting lifelessly in an endless abyss all alone.

Taking a deep breath Ward opens his eyes, squints at the alarm clock on the nightstand to find its midnight, Skye woke him so she’d be the first one to wish him a happy birthday. The past couple years it’s been a competition between her and Kebo on who would tell him first, since Skye goes to bed with him every night, she’s pretty much won, unless Kebo decides to sneak into their bedroom one year which Ward wouldn’t put past him.

Turning his attention to Skye, who he can make out is smiling when his eyes adjust to the darkness of the room, her hands running through his hair when he says, ‘’thank you’’.

Kissing his forehead she asks, ‘’okay?’’

Knowing what she means he nods, ‘’I don’t think my birth was a cosmic mistake anymore, which is good’’.

‘’Another year older, another year of your dry sense of humor’’.

‘’You love my sense of humor’’.

‘’Babe there are many things I love about you, that isn’t one of them’’.

‘’I’m funny’’.

She caresses his brow, ‘’sure’’.

Skye kisses him, braces her hands on his shoulders, ‘’do you want your present now or later?’’

Holding her hips his gaze falls to her chest and Skye rolls her eyes, ‘’it’s not me’’.

‘’You don’t have to get me anything’’.

‘’It’s your birthday, of course I’m going to get you a present, Clint, Nat and Tony’s stuff are all on the coffee table for you to open. Bruce and Steve’s packages were delayed in the mail’’. 

Before Kebo, Skye and the Avengers, no one had ever given Ward a present of any kind, not on any holiday or his birthday.

He used to think it was normal, until Paul pointed out that it wasn’t, and the haunted look Kebo got in his eyes whenever he mentioned it.

‘’I wouldn’t be disappointed if you didn’t’’.

‘’I know, but that’s not the point. So suck it up’’.

Her words are kind and he kisses her again, getting lost in the one person who has loved him more than they’ve ever loved anyone else.

They drift back to sleep and Ward rises at five a.m. on the dot as he always does, leaving a still sleeping Skye in their bed. Pressing a kiss to her brow he covers her with the blanket, dresses and walks out shutting the door behind him. The house is warm against the winter chill outside, one glance out the windows confirms it snowed heavily overnight, six inches if he had to guess, painting their property into a winter wonderland that he never gets tired of seeing every year.

After working out and showering Grant stands in the kitchen making a pot of coffee, staring out the window above the sink as birds fly in between ice covered branches, he even spots a doe and her fawn gliding over the frost littered ground, their hooves making small tracks in the deep snow. Grant tries and fails every year not to think of his family on his birthday, but apparently even time can’t stop ghosts from haunting you, though now they no longer bite and choke him.

The memory of his parents and Christian linger and probably always will, but he’s learned to live around them, to survive despite them, and to live and be happy no matter the poison they used to feed him. Because now he understands they were wrong, he’s not this soulless monster who deserves to die, not this evil person who will never have anyone love him, he wasn’t born evil, he wasn’t a mistake who should have died in the womb.

He’s just Grant, terrible things happened to him and he survived, now he’s building a life for himself that was denied to him for so long, he’s learned to live again despite the abuse, the brain washing ,and he’s never been more healthy or happy in his life than he is now. Retired and living on his own property in Montana, has a house of his own, a wife who loves him, his parents and John Garrett were so wrong. Grant has people who love him, a real family and friends, who genuinely want him around, don’t just tolerate his presence in their lives.

Ward sometimes wishes he could go back and tell himself when he was a child, either waiting for someone to acknowledge his birthday and being disappointed when they didn’t, or hiding from Christian when he remembered what January 7th entailed and wanting to make him suffer for it, that everything was going to be okay in the end. Wants to take his twenty three year old self by the shoulders when he hid out in diners alone or went in the line of fire to make himself forget the demons, that it wouldn’t always feel like this.

That he wouldn’t always hate himself for existing even though it wasn’t his fault, that one day he’d stop blaming himself for the horrors John put him through, that someday he’ll find the happiness he read about and won’t remember the kind of pain he was in beforehand. Grant is thinking about his younger brother Thomas when the back door opens and Kebo walks in, clearing his boots of snow before placing them on the hardwood floor and shrugging off his coat.

He’s pouring a second cup of coffee when Kebo’s footsteps suddenly quicken and Grant doesn’t tense when his friend hugs him tightly and yells ‘’happy birthday!’’ so loudly it probably woke Skye up. After scolding him for the tone, Ward smiles, turns and hugs Kebo back, they part and he goes to grab the ingredients for pumpkin pancakes out of the pantry. Grant is cracking eggs into a skillet when Kebo reaches in his pocket and fishes out what looks like a frame wrapped in tissue paper.

Ward knows he isn’t the easiest to shop for since he never wants for much, is a simple man and doesn’t necessarily need anything he can’t buy himself, so presents are usually a hit or miss for the people that love him. But he always appreciates whatever is given to him because he spent so long going without. Peeling back the paper reveals a dark wood colored framed photograph of himself and Kebo at a bar, their arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling and probably drunk.

They have so few pictures together so this is nice, a moment forever encased behind glass, a memory for someone look back on when they’re both gone, proof that even the most desperate and damaged people can survive, come out the other side and find friendship with each other. Before Grant can say thank you Kebo slaps another package in his hand, this one is bigger and wrapped with colorful celebratory paper and a bow.

Grinning Grant unravels it carefully so it doesn’t rip even though Kebo insists it’s fine, and his favorite brand of shirts slide out along with an audio tape of a book he’s wanted to read but hasn’t had the time, this way he can listen to the story emerge and build in the car. Expressing his thanks, Ward puts everything on the coffee table next to the Avengers’ gifts which he’ll open once Skye comes out. He’s opening a pack of bacon when she emerges, dressed in sweats and one of Steve’s old shirts, feet bare.

Hair wet from a shower she greets him with a kiss as he hands her a cup of coffee, leans against the counter and glances toward the coffee table, doesn’t miss the wink Skye sends Kebo.

‘’I won by the way’’.

Kebo opens up a beer, ‘’son of a bitch’’.

‘’Face it, you’ll never’’-

‘’I’ll win next year’’.

‘’No you won’t, I’m locking our bedroom door’’.

‘’That’s cheating’’.

‘’Is not’’.

‘’Grant tell her it’s cheating’’.

‘’Grant tell him he better not even think about breaking into our room or sleeping on our floor to one up me next year’’.

‘’You two done yet?’’

Skye sticks her tongue out at Kebo, ‘’idiot’’.

‘’You started it’’.

‘’Did not’’.

Grant smiles to himself at the normal banter, that two people care about him so much that they bicker over who will celebrate his life first.

They’ve finished eating and are sitting on the couch, Kebo in the arm chair across from them when Skye puts her feet in Ward’s lap and says, ‘’how do you feel about going to the aquarium this year instead of a museum?’’

That’s the usual plan, along with dinner and cake at the end of the night.

Grant kisses her nose and replies, ‘’I don’t care what we do as long as I get to spend the day with you’’.

Kebo gags and then says, ‘’what am I chopped liver?’’

‘’Wife trumps best friend’’.

He scoffs, ‘’no it doesn’t’’.

When Grant doesn’t dispute it Kebo kicks his shin, ‘’tell her wife doesn’t trump best friend’’.

‘’I’m not getting involved in your drama’’.

‘’Prick’’.

‘’Thought you were supposed to be nice to me on my birthday’’.

‘’Piss off’’.

After going on a walk Ward opens the presents from the Avengers, mostly consisting of cologne, novelty socks and a new pair of boots and a leather jacket from Nat. They all call him to wish a happy birthday and Clint and Steve promise to take him out to dinner the next time they’re in town, Nat teases him endlessly about his age, even though she’s older than him. Fitzsimmons call next and it always robs him of breath whenever he hears from them, he still can’t quite believe they forgave him and are still his friends after everything.

Skye, Ward and Kebo go for a light lunch in the city before heading to the aquarium, one of the few places in the public eye Ward enjoys being in, the ocean and the lives inside of it have always fascinated him even as a child. They walk in and spend the next few hours inside dark blue tunnels filled with sharks, small tanks with jellyfish and tropical neon colored fish. The dark blue glow of the lights frames Skye’s face perfectly and Grant finds himself distracted on more than one occasion.

They walk hand in hand past the stingrays and otters, Grant smiles as a child laughs loudly as the otters splash in the chilled water against the glass. Once they’re finished there Skye and Kebo take him to dinner where they tell the wait staff it’s his birthday and he’s presented with a giant ice cream sundae covered in hot fudge and caramel while they sing to him. The attention doesn’t make him uncomfortable the way it once would have and Kebo and Skye eat most of the dessert.

On the way home Kebo demands they stop by the liquor store while Skye and Ward wait in the car, she passes the time by kissing him and saying he’s going to love his presents. Kebo runs back to the car and throws a bottle at Grant as they drive away, and it turns out to be his favorite brand of whiskey. A few hours later after opening that whiskey and Skye and Kebo pull out a cake from the freezer and sing happy birthday to him, night has fallen and so has the temperature.

Skye and Ward are outside the snow falling quickly and sticking to the ground in thick sheets, all of Kebo’s shoveling from this morning disappearing. Ward sits in his chair on the front porch, Skye in his lap, wrapped up in hats, thick coats and socks, heated blankets and steaming tea in mugs. Her head resting against his shoulder as she takes a sip of tea, closes her eyes, this right here, he could die happily if the apocalypse were to come.

‘’So how shitty was your birthday and how much do you hate me for it?’’

Grant kisses the top of her head, ‘’I loved it’’.

‘’Are you sure? We should have decorated, covered the house in streamers or something’’.

‘’It was perfect’’.

At her silence he adds, even though she already knows, ‘’I spent every year hating the day I was born and so did everyone else if they remembered to acknowledge it at all, having you and the Avengers even mention it since I’ve known you is enough’’.

He looks down to find her frowning before running a finger over his brow, her skin warm from the blankets and tea, ‘’I wish I could hurt everyone who has ever hurt you’’.

Ward smirks, ‘’you already have’’.

‘’Not the ones from your past’’.

He shrugs, ‘’nothing good would come from it, my family never wanted me so in the end they got exactly what they wished for and so did I’’.

‘’I just hate that you went through all that alone’’.

He kisses the inside of her wrist, her hand cupping his cheek and responds, ‘’me too’’.

They’re quiet for a while and then she says, ‘’you know if you ever wanted to go down that road, into that darkness, to hurt every single person who has ever hurt you, I’d go with you’’.

Smiling Ward tucks her as close as can be into his chest, ‘’I know’’.

‘’Just you me and the darkness babe’’.

Skye would burn down the world for him if she asked, would do anything for him, that kind of love is something they’ve earned, both fought and bled for it to make it here, find this peace and quiet.

‘’Is that my present?’’

She rolls her eyes, reaches down and pulls out a rectangular box sealed in brightly colored birthday themed wrapping paper.

He opens it the same way he did Kebo’s, setting the perfectly intact paper down on the ground and lifts the lid on the box. Inside reveals a silver framed photo of them he’s never seen before, she’s sitting in his lap on a beach somewhere on a restaurant patio, drink in hand wearing a red sun dress and sunglasses, laughing at something he said, his hand curled on her hip. They look so happy, in love as he gazes at her, Kebo must have taken it from when they first started dating.

Holding her chin, Ward kisses Skye gratefully and she gestures for him to go onto the next item in the box. There’s a piece of paper that catches his eye and as he reads he feels his face light up, a grin stretching his lips, it’s a two month long pass to come into the animal shelter and pet the dogs for as long as he wants. They normally reserve it for children but Skye must have done something to get him in, since they moved here he’s always wanted to volunteer but just hasn’t found the time.

A new watch because he mentioned last week he was in need of one, a coffee mug that reads ‘ _Sexiest Husband_ ’ which makes him laugh loudly, the latest Star Wars movie on DVD, two books he mentioned wanting to check out a while back, a gift card to the nearest hardware store where Ward finds himself a lot at these days, and more ammo for his gun. Hand around her throat Grant kisses her in thanks, tells her how much he loves everything, how he loves her so much he may die from it one day.

They’re both smiling when they pull apart and Skye kisses his nose, ‘’January 7th is my favorite day, right after our wedding day’’.

Since Ward is normally the cheesy romantic line giver in their relationship, he’s surprised at her comment but smiling all the same, so much warm happiness and love filling his chest.

‘’I don’t think anyone has ever said that to me before’’.

Skye cups his face tenderly, brown eyes swimming with affection for him, always him, ‘’it’s my favorite day because my favorite person was born on it, and he’s the best man I’ve ever known’’.

It never fails to surprise him when she says things like this, after a lifetime of being told he was a worthless and evil human being.

Never needing words to communicate, she knows what that means to him, so he just kisses her instead and says, ‘’I love you’’.

‘’I love you too’’.

‘’Thank you for my present’’.

He can’t wait to go to the animal shelter next week.

‘’Want to go inside for your last one?’’

Recognizing the gleam in her eye he teases, ‘’thought you said this morning you weren’t my present’’.

She shrugs and yelps when he stands holding her close as she wraps her legs around his waist, ‘’I changed my mind’’.

He cleans everything up off the porch, throws it on the couch and locks the front door all with one hand, the other occupied with sliding up Skye’s shirt.

‘’Is it a cop out to use sex as a present?’’

Ward turns off the kitchen lights and says, ‘’you won’t ever hear me complaining about it’’.

She snorts, ‘’men’’.

He carries her to the bedroom and locks the door, the bedside lamp casting a warm orange glow across her skin as he takes off her shirt. 

‘’Happy Birthday babe’’.

She breathes against his mouth when he kisses her.

And Ward has known for years now that he’ll never have to spend another birthday alone and suffering, hating himself and cursing his existence. Skye along with friends and the wonders of therapy have made him want to be alive again. And that is the best gift he could ever ask for, hope for.


End file.
